Hagerstown, Maryland
Congratulations Amanda!
Amanda’s Bio:
Amanda Frederickson has been writing stories since she learned how to write, and telling stories since she could speak. There's even an infamous tale of how, at three years old, she tried to "share" one of her favorite books with her baby brother by throwing it at him. (She has since acquired five more siblings, three cats, and a dog that thinks he's a cat.) She recently graduated college with a double major in Creative Writing and Communications, and has since been trying to concentrate on writing (while paying the bills by making chain mail jewelry and working at a school aftercare program). This will be her second time in print. She's still working on a website for her jewelry.
Remembering Georgia
There's something about riding in a car that is so relaxing for me. Long trips are wonderful for pulling out a book or notebook, sitting back, and losing yourself in the lull of the engine rumble.
Funny how things change. I used to dread summer, with its inevitable looong car rides. My parents wanted every vacation to be interesting, and more often than not their idea of "interesting" clashed with mine. While I begged for amusement parks, they gave me archeology digs, the Grand Canyon, a dairy farm, the Oregon Trail, and a topaz mine, among others. I wanted thrills and chills. I got more arrowheads than a girl could want.
Then came the summer that changed it all. The summer we went down to Georgia with a church group to help rebuild houses after a tornado.
We weren't the first to get there; the foundations were laid and the shells of exteriors were finished for most of them. I was, of course, a sulky, rebellious adolescent who didn't see why we were building houses for other people. My father simply handed me a handful of screws, and told me to hand them to him when he asked. We were putting up drywall. I held the screws and sulked.
Then, the third day, the owners of the house came by; a man and his son, who was a few years younger than I. The son promptly darted into one of the rooms and spun around, arms outstretched, the biggest grin on his face. "This is my room!" he proudly declared.
The room we had just finished drywalling.
I was stunned. It was the first time I really realized the tornado victims were real people. A little boy who always carried a top, because it was the only toy he had from before the tornado. Another was a lady who was so afraid of another tornado that the basement of her new house was practically another house, complete with concrete doghouse.
Since then I've helped build a church in the Dominican Republic, built a new cabin for a local summer camp, built several play sets, gone down to New Orleans to help clean-up efforts, helped build a new facility for a center for troubled teen boys, and I'm planning to go to Kazakhstan to help with the church's library project.
I'll have to tell my parents when I get home: I don't think I would have gained so much from an amusement park.
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